# PyPy[summary-2005-12-09]

PyPy[summary-2005-12-09]
news doc contact getting-started EU/project issue

# This Week in PyPy 6

# Introduction

This is the sixth of what will hopefully be many summaries of what's been going on in the world of PyPy in the last week. I'd still like to remind people that when something worth summarizing happens to recommend if for "This Week in PyPy" as mentioned on:

> http://codespeak.net/pypy/dist/pypy/doc/weekly/

where you can also find old summaries. This week features the first IRC summary from Pieter Holtzhausen, a feature that will hopefully continue.

There were about 150 commits to the pypy section of codespeak's repository in the last week (a relatively small number for a sprint week -- lots of thinking going on here).

# The Sprint!

This is covered in more detail in the sprint report, but seems to be going well. There has been work on the JIT, supporting larger integers and sockets in RPython, making the stackless option more useful, performance, compiler flexibility, documentation and probably even more.

# IRC Summary

Thanks again to Pieter for this. We need to talk about formatting :)

Friday http://tismerysoft.de/pypy/irc-logs/pypy/%23pypy.log.20051202:

    [00:04] Arigo states it is time to merge the PBC branch. Merging henceforth
            commences.
    [15:46] Pedronis and mwh discusses the simplification of the backend
            selection of the translator. Some translator planning documents
            checked in later.

Saturday http://tismerysoft.de/pypy/irc-logs/pypy/%23pypy.log.20051203:

    [15:45] Stakkars mentions the idea he posted to pypy-dev, that involves
            the substitution of CPython modules piecewise with pypy generated
            modules. Pedronis replies that he has thought of a similar
            approach to integrate pypy and Jython, but that this effort needs
            to be balanced with the fact that the pypy JIT currently needs
            attention.

Sunday http://tismerysoft.de/pypy/irc-logs/pypy/%23pypy.log.20051204:

    [14:03] Stakkars asks about the necessity of 3 stacks in the l3interpreter
            that Armin has been working on. One for floats, ints and
            addresses. After remarks about easier CPU support, Arigo replies
            that there is simply no sane way to write RPython with a single one.
    [18:26] Gromit asks how ready pypy is for production usage. He is
            interested in pypy as a smalltalk-like environment, since he deems
            objects spaces to be reminiscent of smalltalk vm images.
    [18:31] Stakkars states that he believes the project should postpone
            advanced technologies, in favour of getting the groundwork to a
            level where the project really becomes a CPython alternative.

Monday http://tismerysoft.de/pypy/irc-logs/pypy/%23pypy.log.20051205:

    [01:44] Pedronis running counting microbenchmarks, one 4.7 times slower
            than CPython, the other one 11.3 times. Function calling takes
            its toll in the latter.

Tuesday, Wednesday:

    [xx:xx] Sprint background radiation. Braintone rings like a bell. Not
            much to report.

Thursday http://tismerysoft.de/pypy/irc-logs/pypy/%23pypy.log.20051208:

    [17:55] Stakkars guess that RPython may get basic coroutine support, and
            is excited about that.
    [18:05] Stakkars votes for having stackless enabled all the time. The
            advantages:
               - real garbage collection
               - iterator implementation without clumsy state machines
    [20:19] Rhamphoryncus wonders whether dynamic specialization (e.g. psyco)
            can possibly improve memory layout.
    [20:46] Sabi is glad that long long is now supported (courtesy of mwh and
            Johahn). He yanks out his work around.

# EU-related Talks

On Monday Holger spoke at a German EU office workshop in Bonn and two days later he, Alastair and Bea spoke at a more union-wide EU workshop in Brussels. Both talks were very well received and while ostensibly we were telling the EU about our project, we gained much immediately useful information about how the EU actually adminsters projects such as ours.